My "kids" at the church have started accusing me of being their mom - how weird is that? Yup - at 33 years old I have 30 kids (give or take, I can never keep track of them all....) That's impressive, I think. Though not quite so good as when I was in my mid to late twenties and had about 250 kids (at the high school where I taught). (Funny story there, as a side note: I was talking about "my kids" to someone I sang in a choir with back then, and she politely asked how old they were, so I said, "high school", and then she politely asked how many kids I had, and you should have seen her face when I answered 250!! We rather quickly sorted out the misunderstanding after that....)

Anyway, I have "kids" at the church. Not that they are children, but there is definitely a sense that they "belong" to me (so to speak) and that I, in a way, "belong" to them. The older I get, and the further away from being a teenager I am myself, the more those relationships take on a rather surreal sense of the parental - the love, the desire to protect, the nurturing, the pride and pain in watching them, and, occassionally, the desire to kill (but that's another blog altogther). :)

It sharply reminds me as I'm thinking of all this, that we as a church community raise children and teens together. I am no one's parent, but I have a responsibility to teach, exhort, encourage, and hold accountable those that are around me, and especially those that are younger than me. I'm not saying I am always good at it, but anyone who is a parent will likely agree that they are not perfect all the time. (Of course I don't mean you, Mom and Dad. Keep me in the will....) And even though I wear the title "Youth Pastor," I am not the only person in the congregation who is called upon to raise our children to be Godly men and women, with right understanding of the scripture and a passion for the lost. In Paul's letter to Titus (chapter 2), he talks about what each group in the church is to be taught - but I doubt very much he was expecting Titus to do it all. We are all called upon to teach and raise our children - I pray we are given enough wisdom to do it well.